Council Delays Vote on Renovation Plans for Balboa Theatre : Government: Discussion on reopening historic theater is sidetracked by a fight over funding for sidewalk repair at Spreckels Theatre.

By MICHAEL GRANBERRY

April 8, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The San Diego City Council on Tuesday put off until April 28 a vote on a proposal by the city’s redevelopment agency to renovate and reopen the 68-year-old Balboa Theatre.

The Centre City Development Corp. voted last month to award a $65,000 contract to a Connecticut-based consulting firm to find a full-time operator for the Balboa, which opened as a vaudeville house in 1924 and closed as a single-screen movie theater in 1986.

The council had been expected to approve CCDC’s action but discussed the matter for only a few minutes before the discussion broke down in a confrontation over what to do about new sidewalks in front of the Spreckels Theatre on Broadway.

Pam Hamilton, the executive vice president of CCDC, quoted a 1988 study in saying it would cost an estimated $11 million to restore the Balboa, which has long been considered structurally unsound. Hamilton was asked numerous questions about cost.

The $11 million would cover the entire project, said Hamilton, who acknowledged afterward that a recessionary climate might bring a lower estimate. No direct city subsidy would be required. Money gathering interest in CCDC coffers would allow the city to sell bonds, she said.

But Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, considered a patron of the arts, took the item afield by raising repeated questions about the need for new sidewalks in front of the Spreckels and why those had never been completed with CCDC funds, “as they should have been.”

There followed a hostile exchange between Hamilton and Jacquelyn Littlefield, the owner of the Spreckels.

Hamilton said later that the subject of new sidewalks in front of the Spreckels was first raised as an issue 20 years ago and had remained an issue only because Littlefield is “so difficult to deal with.”

Soon, the topic of the Balboa was all but forgotten as a topic. With almost a full agenda still remaining at 5 p.m., Councilman Tom Behr moved that both topics--the Spreckel’s sidewalks and the fate of the Balboa--be put off until more information can be compiled and cooler heads could prevail.

Before that, however, Littlefield said she “just wanted to remind the council that the Spreckels is alive and kicking, and operating under its own funds.” She quoted a 1986 study, which she said names the Spreckels as the city’s best theater and “one of the best in the West.”

Littlefield, who views the Balboa as competition--the Balboa has 1,500 seats, the Spreckels 1,456--predicted it would cost $15 million to $20 million to renovate the Spanish-style theater, next to Horton Plaza, which is the last unfinished link in CCDC’s Horton Redevelopment Project.

Wolfsheimer said she believes “strongly” in the need for a renovated Balboa, “but I’m not sure we have the money right now. We’re coming out of a recession--a depression--and I’m not sure we can swing it at the moment.”

Wolfsheimer was told that the city paid $2.4 million to purchase the Balboa, which has been a shell for six years. She asked about the wisdom of renovating and reopening an aging theater now, “when arts organizations are dying on the vine. . . . I don’t like to see us go into bricks and mortar when times are tough.

“We are government. We don’t know how to run a lot of things,” she said. “We have limitations. . . . Let’s take another look in two years. Maybe this isn’t the year to do it.”

But then the debate turned to sidewalks. Littlefield reappeared at the lectern, and she and Hamilton exchanged comments.

Littlefield argued that $500,000 of city money had been set aside for sidewalks in front of the Spreckels, but that the repair costs have since climbed to $850,000, and that she was “the only owner in the area” who had been asked to subsidize even a portion of the cost.

“The sidewalks are complicated, because they are the ceiling for her basement garage,” Hamilton said, adding that the sidewalks need replacement, because, in their current condition, they pose a hazard.

“CCDC used to be tenants in the Spreckels building,” Hamilton said. “Pieces of the sidewalk fall onto your car. It’s a serious hazard. We could never come to an agreement with her. The city was actually going to file an abatement-nuisance resolution, sell bonds, lien them against her property and improve the sidewalks.

“That finally got her talking to us about getting real about this.”

A cost-sharing plan was forged, Hamilton said, but have not come to fruition because Littlefield moved slowly.

In terms of the Balboa, CCDC has set a timetable calling for the hiring of an operator by mid-1993, with renovation beginning in 1994, followed by a grand reopening in July, 1995.

“We’ll try again on the 28th,” Hamilton said. “But my advice would be, ‘Don’t have us proceed if, in two years, you’re going to tell us to forget it. We’ve got plenty of other things to work on.”